Nvidia’s Eerily Realistic Human Head, Now on Mobile

Companies that specialize in computer graphics often try to make realistic simulations of people. Nvidia is trying to raise the bar–and bring the benefits to mobile devices.

The Silicon Valley chip maker is using the Siggraph conference this week to show off what it calls Project Logan, an effort to shoehorn the most powerful graphics technology into smaller chips that could be used in pocket-sized devices.

Nvidia says Project Logan draws a third of the power of graphics chips used in most high-end tablets today.

Along with talk of the technology, the company is showing how Project Logan can be used to run a computerized simulation of a human called Ira, a computerized creation that looks like a photo but moves and changes his expression in unusually lifelike ways.

Ira was unveiled at an Nvidia event earlier this year, but at that time was running on a full-blown version of what the company calls its Kepler graphics chip technology on a personal computer. This week, the company is showing how it has quietly been working on a mobile variant can do much the same thing.

“Kepler’s unofficial mascot, in other words, has been leading a secret double life,” the company says in a blog post.

It admits that the mobile Ira is not quite as realistic as the full PC-powered version, but mighty close. “The result, we think: a helping of shock and awe, to go, hold the uncanny aftertaste,” the company says.

Besides the gee-whiz factor, is upgrading the graphics capability of mobile devices that big a deal? The promise is that pocket-sized devices could run essentially the same realistic varieties of software as beefy PCs and gaming consoles, notes Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, a company that developed software known as game engines that are a foundation of many sophisticated programs.

“More than ever before, we see the opportunity for developers to create high-end games and ship them across multiple platforms on a wide variety of devices, including tablet, smartphone, Windows, Mac, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One,” he wrote in a blog post.